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Ridiculing someone as ‘fat’ or ‘obese’ could become a hate crime under an idea being floated by a group of MPs and a leading charity.

The Government should consider putting ‘appearance-based discrimination’ on a legal par with race and sexual discrimination, the report suggests.

Rosi Prescott, chief executive of Central YMCA, said if there was strong evidence that appearance-related discrimination was widespread, the Equalities Act should be broadened to include it.

That would make it a punishable offence to harass someone because of their appearance, for example by drawing attention to their weight.

She said: “All the rules that apply under the Equalities Act now would also apply to appearance-related discrimination. They would be applied consistently.”

Society should be more accepting of overweight or obese people, said Ms Prescott, who even questioned whether they should be told [Jenn: By DOCTORS!!] if they were carrying too many pounds.

She said: “If they don’t feel overweight, and there are no health indications, what’s the problem?”

I think my head just exploded. For fuck’s sake, give your head a shake. If they don’t FEEL overweight???

Let’s for a moment put aside the fact that these idiots want to make calling someone fat the same as a racial slur. What’s next, telling someone that they have terrible taste in shoes and possibly smell funny sends you to jail? Since when did being rude and a bit of a dink and hurting someone’s feelings become a criminal offense? Oh wait, maybe soon in Britain.

I wonder if I’d get arrested for calling myself a Former Fatty. Can I go to jail for hate-crime-ing myself?

My biggest issue though, is that these people would be ok with making it a criminal offense if a doctor tells their patient they are overweight. Almost two-thirds of British adults are now either overweight or obese. This isn’t just about people calling other people names and making them feel bad. This is about telling a medical professional they can’t tell their patient they are at risk of complications like diabetes and heart problems because they don’t want to MAKE THEM FEEL SAD. You know what makes people sad? When their loved ones die of something that they could have prevented. Telling someone they are at risk of illness or death if their lifestyle continues shouldn’t get a doctor put in a squad car. Telling a doctor to wait until a severely overweight person who doesn’t “feel fat” shows symptoms to bring up their weight as a risk factor is absolutely ridiculous.

As you all know, I was fat. And not just kinda. I even had fat deposits in my eyes. I was told by my doctor I was overweight, and that my weight was going to cause issues with my joints and my heart and my blood pressure. And she then offered to help me NOT be fat so my health would be ok. Because that’s her JOB. My doctor sent me to a nutritionist, and offered to meet with me weekly to check my progress. You know why she did that? So I wouldn’t get sick later. Prevention. If doctors are forced to wait until a person shows symptoms it might be too late. And purely from a practical standpoint, I can tell you from experience it would have been a lot easier to lose 20 pounds than it was to lose 65. Stop the gain earlier, and it’s better all around.

Political correctness is now at risk of hurting people’s health and shortening their lives. Unbelievable.

Turning 40 in 2006, Rich Roll was 50 lbs overweight and unable to climb a flight of stairs without stopping for air. Within two years, he was one of the fittest men in the world. The bit I’ve read on the internet of his story has me rushing to my library (just a click away!) to put a hold on his book Finding Ultra. Originally, I read about him in an article someone sent me here from Chatelaine magazine about ten things learned from him; go to the link for the details, but in brief they are:

You don’t need a diet.
You can’t make someone change.
Change comes from balance.
Be your own support.
Take it day by day.
Manage life.
Keep it simple.
Don’t define yourself.
Do your research.
If you’re not growing, you’re not living.

I can’t cram for a Half Marathon. While I could pull off running a (slow) 10k right now, there is no way in hell I can wing a Half. My training since December has been erratic at best, and with only about nine weeks before the June race date I know I’m not conditioned enough to run 21.2k. No amount of denial or positive thinking will change that. I’d very likely end up injured if I tried.

Today I faced the music and stopped deluding myself; I didn’t do the work so have to commit to walking most of it. (Ha! I bet you thought I’d say not do it at all. Nope – a ‘did not run’ is only allowed when doctors are involved!) Looking at my race time will be tough though – I’m a perfectionist and pretty hard on myself, and this feels like failure. Another fucking life lesson. That doesn’t get me off the hook either. Not only do I still need to train, I have a Warrior Dash this summer that I don’t want to fuck up!

I ran home from work today, having carted my running gear with me on the bus in the morning. The voice in my head who loves to criticize, provide an abundance of unwanted and lame excuses, and otherwise find ways of making life miserable was not going to make it easy though.

“You forgot to bring your running shoes, you idiot! Now you can’t run home like you said you would.” (How that little bastard likes to criticize).

“I have good walking shoes on; they’ll do.”

“No they won’t! Are you crazy? You could hurt yourself.”

“Bullshit. You’re just making stupid excuses. So suck it up because I’m running! The shoes will be just fine.”

Thankfully, silence ensued… for a while.

Off I went, leaving my work clothes, umbrella and lunch container in my desk drawer; I’m going to have to figure out which day to pack home all the stuff, but that’s the least of my worries.

It turns out, the damn voice wasn’t finished with me yet, enjoying giving me a good heckling as I ran. It’s never is finished with me it seems; we’ve known each other far too long.

“Oh, you’re too tired for this. You should stop and walk. Maybe just catch the bus. Come on; you ran yesterday so you deserve a break”

“Um, I’ve been on my ass all day at a computer. How can I be tired?”

Ignoring my question, and realizing a different tack was needed, it went into criticize mode. “But you’re so slow!”

“Slow is better than not running.”

“Barely” (oh the sarcasm!).

With all its contempt, excuses and bloody whining, the voice and I continue to have ongoing conversations about exercise, mostly not out loud. I’ve been hard on myself lately and so the voice thinks it has some leeway. Sometimes, like today, I defy it just to show it I can; no creaky knee, windy weather, wrong shoes kind of excuses stopped me, and I had the right to pat myself on the back afterwards. And thankfully the little bastard begrudgingly said, “Good job” in spite of itself.

I need to reprogram the little shit before hedrives me mad, but only if I can catch him; he thinks I’m too slow.

I met a guy a few months after I took my ‘After’ pic that you see here on FFF. I was happy, healthy, confident, and excited about life. He and I became serious pretty quickly. I told him I had been overweight until fairly recently, but was committed to my new healthy lifestyle. He seemed to take that pretty well.

About a month into our relationship, we were discussing relationships, and how important it is to feel attracted to your partner. During that discussion he brought up my weight. He told me that it would be a good idea if I stay within ten pounds of my goal weight. That way he’d stay attracted to me, and we wouldn’t have to break up.

In retrospect, as soon as that came out of his mouth I should have told him to fuck right off, and never spoken to him again.

But did I?

No. I did not.

You see, at that time I was relatively freshly at goal. Inside, I had a fear that for some reason I might go back to where I had been, that I would screw this whole thing up. Did I? No, three years later I’m still five pounds below what I was in my ‘After’ photo. But at that time, the fear was very real. He was saying exactly what I was thinking; that I would get fat again, and he would leave. After all, I hadn’t loved myself at 220, so in a weird way, I thought I wouldn’t have blamed him for not loving me either.

So I agreed with him.

Fast forward to a year later. For some time I had been noticing him acting weirdly around me whenever I ate something not ‘on plan’. I didn’t do it a lot, but part of living a healthy normal life is sometimes eating or drinking things that aren’t awesome for you. My weight was virtually the same as it had been since we met. We were on a road trip, and stopped at a Starbucks, so I thought I’d perform a test to see if I was imagining things. I went in with him, and ordered a small mocha chocolatey chip frappachino extravaganza.

He didn’t speak to me for twenty minutes. Even when spoken to.

After poking at him for miles, he finally broke down and admitted that he couldn’t handle me eating non-healthy things, and that he “felt a need to control everything that I ate”. That I wasn’t fat, but he knew I had been, and was always on edge that I was going to snap and become the size of a beluga, and he’d have to break up with me, and he really didn’t want to have to break up with me. He apologized and said he’d try to stop. But the damage was done.

Did I leave? No again. Facepalm.

I thought it would lower his stress if I just didn’t eat bad things around him, and he’d see over time I was doing ok. So I started hiding food and eating when he wasn’t around. Slowly this behavior grew until I actually couldn’t eat anything at all when he was around, so I made sure I wasn’t home for dinner when he was. Shortly after that, I couldn’t eat anything around anyone, even my friends, because I was afraid they would think I was a failure for some reason.

And then I could barely eat alone.

I ended that relationship for various reasons shortly thereafter. One of his parting comments to me was a sincerely meant thank you, for making him see that he could be attracted to women “with more to them.”

I was five pounds below my goal picture then too.

Would this happen to me now? Absolutely not. But I learned a lot from that experience. I will never again have a relationship with a non-supportive partner who loves me in SPITE of the fact that I lost a lot of weight. I will only be with someone who sees and loves my personality and my strengths, and who loves me for more than just my appearance. I can only imagine what he would have done if I’d gotten cancer. I dodged a bullet there, I’ll tell ya.

And will I ever be overweight again?

Well, I can definitely say with confidence that I won’t be carrying 180 pounds of douchebag with me ever again.

Last week I posted Part 1 of my discussion with my sister Sharon about her weight loss, and similarities and differences with mine. She has lost over 40 pounds in just over a year, and is a big source of inspiration and motivation for me. This is Part 2 of our conversation.

Jenn: Do you like your healthier lifestyle? Why or why not?

Sharon: Absolutely! I feel like I’m in control of my eating habits now and I can’t see myself ever going back to the unhealthy lifestyle I was living. I have way more energy, and shopping for clothes is now a treat instead of a depressing chore. I’m a much happier person because of it 😀

[Jenn: Clothes shopping has definitely been a huge and awesome change since my weight loss. It’s a lot more fun buying clothes when you like how you look in them. I can’t imagine living like I used to, again. Physically alone the lack of energy and carrying that amount of weight around with me again would be not good, much less the mental/emotional ramifications.]

J: What motivates you to continue?

S: I love being full of energy and the whole thing is now routine for me. It gets much easier with time. I’ve lost a little over 40 lbs now and am constantly getting complimented on what a good job I’m doing. I have great support from everyone in my life, especially you, and that is a wonderful thing.

[Jenn: Awwww! Thanks!! 😀 Energy is a big difference for me too. You would think doing nothing on the couch would leave you lots of energy to do things. Turns out working out gives you five times more energy than doing zero does. It’s counterintuitive, but I’m not complaining! The support I received from you then, and still do now, keeps me going when I want to sit on the couch and eat guacamole. Thanks kiddo.]

J: What challenges do you face, and how do you deal with them?

S: There’s always the challenge of eating out at restaurants. Now I pre-plan what I am going to eat before I get there. When I am feeling blah and don’t want to exercise I just tell myself that it is only an hour and it will fly by. Even if I only do 30 minutes of exercise, it’s better than sitting on the couch doing nothing. I get nagged at work to eat junk that people bring in but I don’t give in and think that one cookie is an extra 30 minutes of exercise I don’t want to do, so that makes my decision not to eat it come very easily lol

[Jenn: My motto when losing weight was ‘That won’t get me where I want to go.’ I had always though that saying no to bad food involved willpower, but it really didn’t when I was losing. It’s a decision I made, and re-made every time I was offered something. That’s a good viewpoint about food and exercise, and I like that you follow through – if you eat crap, you exercise more. Awesome! 😀 ]

J: What do you think about this whole healthy thing anyway? Glad you did it?

S: For one, I can’t believe I did it. But yeah, I love it! I got rid of all of my old clothes and continue to have to buy smaller sizes. That’s a feeling I wouldn’t trade for the world. I promised myself that I would never buy clothing in bigger sizes ever again.

[Jenn: I got rid of my old clothes too, as I ‘under-grew’ them. Keeping them would have been like subconsciously saying I would need them again. I will NEVER need them again. I can believe you did it. You’ve always been a stubborn one. 😛 I’m so glad you did it, you inspire me every day!]